What is the meaning of Thermal floor? Concept and Definition of Thermal floor

Thermal floor – Its Definition and Concepts 

1. Thermal floor concept

The relief is modifying the climate of greater importance factor, especially in the intertropical zone, so different climate types are mainly related with the relative altitude determined by this relief. Thus arises the concept of climates, also called climate floors, biotic floors and also ecological levels, depending on the criteria that take into account.There are several reasons which could substantiate the use of one of these rather than the others. For example, not only varies the atmospheric temperature with relative height but also other climate elements such as moisture, precipitation, the effects of the winds (especially at the local level), and of course, atmospheric pressure. Thus, the designation of climate floors may prefer if we are going to study in detail how as the altitude in the intertropical zone modifies each and every one of the climatic elements. The same can say with respect to the designation of biotic floors since it can have very important study the adaptation of living organisms to differences in altitude.
The climate varies with height anywhere on the Earth's surface, but only in the intertropical zone we talk about climates in the strict sense since in the temperate zones, the lack of some altitudinal makes that this concept does not have full validity. In spite of this, the existence of altitudinal belts began to study first in European mountains and in other parts of the temperate zone.
Already in the 18th century, with the first ascents in the Alps, they began Horace-Benedict de Saussure and his followers began to speak of the modifications introduced by the altitude in the lives of plants and animals and the disposition of altitudes according to the maximum and minimum temperatures. However, in the temperate zone, is not height above the sea level the only climate in general and the temperature modifier in particular since other factors such as insolation, disposition of the mountains in relation to the winds and others came to locally modify the climates of mountain, which the own Köppen included all them as undifferentiated mountain (climates H) climates. This made the Köppen climate classification could not be applied to the inter-tropical zone, without necessary adaptations, which Trewartha and Thorntwhite made those who received greater acceptance.
It could be said that, in the European Alps, floors farming, forests, alpine meadows and snow-capped, has its limits at very different levels depending on the exposure to winds and heat stroke. Thus, the north-facing mountain slopes will have a few fairly low thermal floors in the slopes or slopes of solana, which are South-oriented. In the high Valley of the Rhone, in Switzerland, for example, almost all the villages, hamlets and scattered houses are on the slopes of solana, which is located on the slopes of the right bank of the river.
And this heat factor affects not only in the settlement of human beings, but also on the geography of plants or Phytogeography and the zoogeography. An example is very clear in the location of the terraces of vine cultivation in the valleys of the Rhine, from the Douro in Portugal and in many other parts and this is due to the need for this crop and many others have one solar rays that you would not get sufficient provision in the slopes or slopes of umbria.
On the other hand, temperate climates are not isothermal as in the intertropical zone but have substantial variability of temperature during the seasons and this occurs in any thermal floor that we find. Thus there is no thermal floor that we can define as macrotermico floor or hot land, nor nor subtropical and temperate called floor, the temperature variations are much stronger throughout the year in temperate zones than in the intertropical, which distorts largely the idea stated about the climates and the provision thereof and its vegetation as the altitude increases. What has always been do is compare the climates of the temperate zone with in the intertropical zone to see the differences and try to explain them. Humboldt was the first that made this kind of comparison when he ascended to the Teide in the Canary Islands, and then to some Andean peaks.

2 Meaning of thermal floor

Floor is a notion with various applications. It is usually the pavement or soil that constitutes the basis of a land or a building. It may be, even, of land or other elements of nature.
Heat, on the other hand, is that which is linked to the temperature or that has the ability to keep it.
These two definitions help us to understand what is a thermal floor. It's the kind of relief that acts as an agent capable of changing climatic conditions of a territory. Modifier action is linked to the height, the level of rainfall, humidity and other factors.
It can be understood, therefore, that a thermal floor is related to a certain altitude climate. The notion emphasizes the link between living organisms and the environment from the altitude of the terrain.
Thermal floors, therefore, are key to determining what kind of plants can be grown in a region. According to the characteristics of the thermal floor, it will be possible to develop a certain type of agriculture.
In tropical regions, different types of climates have distinguished themselves. From sea level to 900 meters of height, with an average temperature that exceeds 24 degrees Celsius, is the macrotermico floor. Between 900 and 1,800 meters, lies the subtropical floor; Ente the 1,800 and 2,500, mesothermal, between 2,500 and 3,400 the floor, the cold ground; 4,800 to 3,400, the volcano floor; in and more than 4,800 metres above the level of the sea, the icy floor.

3. Definition and what Heat floor

In the Andean countryside there are variety of climates, each skirt, each Valley, each plateau has its particular climatic conditions due to solar heat, winds, air humidity, rainfall and altitude.
The differentiation of heights produced called thermal floors, they are: warm, temperate, cold and Moor.
The warm thermal floor includes a height between or and 1,000 m and an average temperature of 25 ° to 30 ° C; the warm thermal floor between 1,000 m and 2,000 m and a temperature average between 17 ° and 23° C; floor heat cold altitudes between 2,000 m and 3,000 m and an average temperature between 12° and 15° C, the thermal floor Páramo in the 3,000 m in front and a temperature below 11 ° C.
The rains, there are two main seasons a year: from April to may and October to November; one of the causes is form as fall the rays of the Sun on the region in these periods, perpendicular, recibien¬do land more heat, bringing as conse¬cuencia evaporation very abundant and therefore rainfall.
Another cause of rainfall in the region is the moisture they bring with them from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans winds and that it is received by the foreign slopes of the mountains; This process is explained in the following way:
Pacific winds push the clouds toward the western cordillera, and find this barrier amounted to get colder layers of air, become Gothic rain, which fall on the outer slope of the cordillera. Clouds reaching to pass the mountains receive over the barrel of the Cauca River more moisture by evaporation that occurs there.
The clouds are still driven to meet another barrier: the central cordillera in whose outer slope, the Western, presents the same phenomenon that in the western cordillera.
On the slope of the cordillera central that gives to the Magdalena river is decreased rain and clouds reaching to follow its course thanks to the winds; loaded moisture which comes from the evaporation of the river above the Valley of the Magdalena, the moisture is carried up to the Highlands of Cundinamarca and Boyacá. The outer slope of the cordillera oriental is very wet because the winds that come from the Atlantic deposited there its moisture.